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Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

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Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you follow the numbers of who is regularly accepting money from Comcast - both Democrats and Republicans are happy to take their money. "Politico reports that 15 of the 18 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold a hearing on the Comcast deal on March 26th, have taken some form of contribution from Comcast." [1] https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/10/5491908/comcast-buys-cong... "...Comcast has canva…

Of course they are, neither party is left of center on the political spectrum.

Of course they are, neither party is left of center on the political spectrum.

This is a prime example of the re-labeling of everything to the right of Bernie Sanders.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something Australia tried to tackle with the NBN, and I would guess that Australia is far more rural and less densely populated than the US. In Australia the solution was a mixture of fibre (FTTP then FTTP), fixed wireless, and then satellite.

That's always a misconception about Australia, as someone who has lived in both. The NBN failed largely because of a government ideology that neutered it from FTTH to FTTN, if that. Australia is fairly equivalent to the US for many areas with the exception of the (relatively) uninhabited interior. If you combined a list of US and Australian cities by population, the top five Australian cities would be in the top 10:…

I think you are making the mistake of comparing Australia's "Greater Capital City Statistical Areas" [0] with United States cities, when the GCCSAs are better compared to US Metropolitan Statistical Areas [1]. The top US MSAs, labeled by key city) are

(1) New York - 20.2M (2) Los Angeles - 13.3M (3) Chicago - 9.5M (4) Dallas - 7.2M (5) Houston - 6.8M (6) Washington, DC - 6.1M (7) Philadelphia - 6.1M (8) Miami - 6.1M (9) Atlanta - 5.8M (10) Boston - 4.8M

Only Sydney would make the top 10, coming in just above Boston.

Both the US and Australia have cities / metro areas that are significant in population as well as huge low-density areas, but the US metro areas are definitely larger. This makes sense given an overall population of 323M vs 24M.

See

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We" (the government) didn't build it or pay for it. This is not and has not ever been true. Here [1] is an open auction with ~$2 billion in federal aid attached - "a total of $1.98 billion for 10 years." This was last updated just over a week ago. I would dig further back for other subsidies, but it is not necessary. Through tax breaks and subsidies we (the government, tax payers, etc) have certainly aided infrastr…

The Connect America Fund is funded through a special tax on telcos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund#Connect... . It's likes taxing cell phone companies to provide free phones for low-income people. Yes, some cell phone companies will end up getting "subsidies" but companies like AT&T (or Apple) would be net payors. And whether or not you call that a "subsidy" in rural areas, everywhere outside of…

> The Connect America Fund is funded through a special tax on telcos

Is this one of the taxes that they just throw straight onto my monthly bill?

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, authoritarianism rears its ugly head in the US once again, across corporate, national, state, and local levels. The same general kind of gaming of the system which resulted in interstates dividing white from non-white neighborhoods is now maintaining the media status quo. On one side, it's the corporatism and Crony Capitalism the left traditionally complains about, now wielded by the Far Left as a non-go…

Except this is a GOP agenda...You are just accusing anything involving regulations as "Leftist" without acknowledging it is the standard banners of your own party that enable it. I am not a Republican. I've always voted Democrat. When your expectations are 180-deg out of whack, it's time to re-visit your world view and assumptions.

Are Democrats and Republicans really 180° apart? From where I sit they seem to waver between 9° and 10° apart... sometimes as much as 12° apart? Much less, of course, when there is a ruinous foreign war to pitch.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#285

> By late 2016, Google executives clearly started becoming disenfranchised by the slow pace ... I assume they mean "disenchanted" -- this sentence makes no sense as written.

It bugged me a lot too that there are a lot of sloppy editorial errors that were somehow not picked up by the journalist, nor the copy editors, and the editor(s) in chief before publishing a headline story like this. It reminded me of how far we've slipped in journalism quality :/

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#286

> By late 2016, Google executives clearly started becoming disenfranchised by the slow pace ... I assume they mean "disenchanted" -- this sentence makes no sense as written.

There's another malapropism further down too - so-and-so trying to bring financial constraint (restraint) to Alphabet.

Yeah, I'm a bit befuddled as to how a journalist can miss these.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#287
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Access is an Alphabet subsidiary separate from Google and its CEO reports to the Alphabet executive team. The people working on it are incentivized for it to succeed, and the next person up is Larry Page.

I believe you mean that the next person up is Ruth Porat. /s

Actually, you prompted me to check, and Dinni isn't listed as having a manager, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But I certainly wouldn't deny Ruth's ability to influence Access's direction. :)

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#288
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's always a misconception about Australia, as someone who has lived in both. The NBN failed largely because of a government ideology that neutered it from FTTH to FTTN, if that. Australia is fairly equivalent to the US for many areas with the exception of the (relatively) uninhabited interior. If you combined a list of US and Australian cities by population, the top five Australian cities would be in the top 10:…

I think you are making the mistake of comparing Australia's "Greater Capital City Statistical Areas" [0] with United States cities , when the GCCSAs are better compared to US Metropolitan Statistical Areas [1]. The top US MSAs, labeled by key city) are (1) New York - 20.2M (2) Los Angeles - 13.3M (3) Chicago - 9.5M (4) Dallas - 7.2M (5) Houston - 6.8M (6) Washington, DC - 6.1M (7) Philadelphia - 6.1M (8) Miami - 6.1M…

You definitely make a good point, but on the flip side of that is also that the MSAs are probably more overarching than GCCSAs.

For example, the Seattle MSA extends as far north as Burlington, Mt Vernon, as far east as almost Lake Chelan, and as far south as Packwood near White Pass.

No one would credibly claim that White Pass was a part of Seattle, any more than Lake Chelan.

Whereas Melbourne absolutely would consider Boronia on the east a suburb, Campbellfield on the north, and Frankson in the south all suburbs.

I do get what you are saying, and of course with that population number it is so, but I don't think that there's really a great correlation (mainly as a result of Census in the US using a non-standard definition of the internation "metropolitan area" to basically... "anywhere else".

That being said, when you look at "as a percentage of the population", Sydney and Melbourne at ~20%, the others at ~10%, there's also not the argument of "hey, these US cities are far more dense and complex than Australia's", when the complexity is far more often a result of _artificial barriers and restrictions in the market_ than anything logistical.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this is a GOP agenda...You are just accusing anything involving regulations as "Leftist" without acknowledging it is the standard banners of your own party that enable it. I am not a Republican. I've always voted Democrat. When your expectations are 180-deg out of whack, it's time to re-visit your world view and assumptions.

Are Democrats and Republicans really 180° apart? From where I sit they seem to waver between 9° and 10° apart... sometimes as much as 12° apart? Much less, of course, when there is a ruinous foreign war to pitch.

Where I'm sitting, authoritarians all look alike to me.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We" (the government) didn't build it or pay for it. This is not and has not ever been true. Here [1] is an open auction with ~$2 billion in federal aid attached - "a total of $1.98 billion for 10 years." This was last updated just over a week ago. I would dig further back for other subsidies, but it is not necessary. Through tax breaks and subsidies we (the government, tax payers, etc) have certainly aided infrastr…

The Connect America Fund is funded through a special tax on telcos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund#Connect... . It's likes taxing cell phone companies to provide free phones for low-income people. Yes, some cell phone companies will end up getting "subsidies" but companies like AT&T (or Apple) would be net payors. And whether or not you call that a "subsidy" in rural areas, everywhere outside of…

Oh please. Incumbents love USF, just like they love all other goofy surcharges. That's whey they invented them in the first place. Sure, their customers pay more than those of their competitors, but through their complete domination of PUCs and FCC they get to decide exactly how the programs are administered. As if they actually needed more barriers to entry for any potential competition, the rules of these programs are continually adjusted to fit exactly what incumbents are doing anyway, while imposing ruinous costs on competitors.
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